Tom's Portal

Compendium December 2011

2011-11-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

So I have been writing for a while now. Early on my writing was a public log of my journey into triathlon. I have been thinking about writing again about my recent revival and injury, but mostly stopped that after a while. The Top few, and a couple that bridge boundaries are repeated so people who only are interested in certain topics can still read them.

My top few:
1) Corporate Venture Capital (2011) - Listed this first out of order. I WANT the right people to read this and consider it!
2) China's Command Economy, Resource Efficiency, and the worlds Geopolitical Future (2009)
3) The Art of Triathlon (2009)
4) Market Based Health Care (2009)
5) Aerobic Training Theory, History, and Methodologies. My take... (2010)
6) The Compton Cookout, and Isadore Hall III: McCarthy's New Age Revival (2010)
7) Climate Prediction Accuracy (2010)
8) Exercise and The Brain. The Body-Mind Connection! (2010)
9) Denialism and FUD (2010)
10) Future Tech: Quantum Redux (2010)
11) Carpe Diem (2010)
12 DNA Replication in silico (2011)
13) Greentech and Alternative Energy (2011)
14) Could we need a revolution any worse? (2011)

Philosophy:
My Departure from Luxtera - Cool note I wrote when I left/got fired a job and how excited I was.
Wealth Inequality (2008) - Musings from 2008 on Wealth inequality and how USA is actually pretty bad. Seems Media and Public is finally coming around to this.
Denialism and FUD - Thoughts on how we are often bombarded with illogical fallacies disguised as arguments.

Politics:
Signing Statements - One of my criticisms of the Obama administration, along with continued gross abuse of warrantless search and surveillance.
Market Based Health Care - My early musings on how we should implement healthcare reform. I still mostly agree.
Corporate Venture Capital - My thoughts on how we could use the current cash pile to grow our economy's infrastructure and make money!
Being Environmentally Friendly does NOT cost money - Self Explanatory
The Compton Cookout, and Isadore Hall III: McCarthy's New Age Revival - Writings in response to a racist incident at UCSD and a politicians response.
Could we need a revolution any worse? - Comments on my disgust regarding government waste, inefficiency and graft.

Sports/Training (these articles often also involve a good amount of philosophy):
The Art of Triathlon - One of my favorite pieces. Musings on triathlon right as I started Ironman Peak and Taper before IM Cozumel in 2009.
Aerobic Training Theory and History - Good compendium for those looking to maximize training results.
Exercise and The Brain. The Body-Mind Connection! - My views on how activities affect our mind, body, and soul.

Socio-Political Stuff:
China, Resources, and the World in 2009 - China and my view of the world in 2009.
Being Environmentally Friendly does NOT cost money - Self Explanatory
Corporate Venture Capital - My thoughts on how we could use the current cash pile to grow our economy's infrastructure and make money!

Tech:
Weaknesses in modern Data Mining - How not thinking "4th dimensionally" as I like to say affects the way we search data.

Science (often get's philosophical as well):
Lack of Genetic Diversity in key crops - The risks we are inducing by reducing our key feedstocks to a VERY small number of species. Also how natural systems could be more effective than pesticides etc,
The evolution of the online ecosystem - cool musings on the internet
Whole Genome Transcription Paper - Paper I wrote software for and collaborated on.
Climate Prediction Accuracy - My call for predictive accuracy to determine our belief.
Roundup Resistant weeds ATTACK! - More comments on how our attempts to subvert nature are hapless, and a call to return to more natural methods.
Future Tech: Quantum Redux - Cool things coming out of quantum mechanics science
Future Tech II: Supersolids, Meta Materials, Varying Fine Structure Constant, and Maxwell's Demon! -
Come more cool things coming out of crazy futuristic science
DNA Replication in silico - Cool accidental genetic inheritance in gene chips.
Greentech and Alternative Energy - Defining the concepts.

A couple of instructive postings (read if you wanna learn):
The Vestibular System - Random cool physiology thing
Error Analysis - Basics
Memristors - New basic electronic component, that can sorta behave like a NEURON in silico!
Infrared -vs- Thermal Junction Temperature Sensing Part 1
Infrared -vs- Thermal Junction Temperature Sensing Part 2

And some random Musings.

I left out the stuff that was a bout news events. Hope you enjoy and give feedback on the page as well as the articles!

Green tech and ALTERNATIVE energy

2011-11-29T10:17:00.000-08:00

I've actually been saying this for a while. We have NO long term studies showing Solar, Wind, or anything is in any way more sustainable, or sustainable at all. It's JUST another source that could allow us diversified and safer energy supplies, possibly at lower long term cost. It's really just business guys, and it's not more proper in any way. I read this article that got me thinking today about the "myth of renewable energy." Of course no matter how close we get I don't think the wildest machinations contemplated in something like The Singularity is Near will result in endless energy, though we may make it so trivial it's of no consequence.

I think it's important that people differentiate between alternative energy, and green technology, as I believe there is no way of creating energy that will not have good and bad side effects. I've personally always wondered what effects large numbers of wind turbines for example would do to wind patterns, and could they have effects like El Nino or something else? That being said what we CAN do is persevere through constant innovation to reduce our NEEDS of energy, land, and natural resources through innovative technology. THAT is what green tech is!

If you haven't read Natural Capitalism it's available free online ( I LOVE Somebody who believes in something so much they give away content for free! ) at natcap.org. Reading this book really changed my life. Green Tech = Tech for reducing our foot print like smart meters, more efficient energy production of any type (more efficient solar cells, less wasteful coal plants etc.), motion sensor lights, or even compact fluorescent bulbs.

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY is just another way of generating energy. Geothermal (cool for places like nordic region, who I'm guessing are also not ripe for solar), Dams (do affect ecosystems, maybe reducing floods for people but destroying ecosystems based on their sediment, as well as disrupting breeding), Solar, Wind etc. It's VERY likely that in the long term some of these things will be more sustainable, and cheaper than others. It's also the case that some places don't have oil, or natural gas, or have used most or all of it up. For the US for example reducing oil needs would reduce money that mostly goes to significantly more corrupt (Knowing that our politics is just LESS corrupt) regimes which are often politically opposed to us on global policy.

That makes me wonder the impact we'll see from the revolutions in the middle east on the impetus for alternative energy. I always say that it's silly for any entity to not be self serving for some degree, so I don't think democracy will change their policies on oil (like China recently putting a crimp on exports of rare earth metals), though perhaps joining the WTO would make them have to leave OPEC (can anyone comment on that?). But these musings I'll save for another time.

Could we need a revolution any worse?

2011-11-20T10:32:00.000-08:00

So not to long ago I saw an article about a drug that for the cost of $93,000 would extend the life of patients with terminal prostate cancer and average of 4 months. This just disgusted me and was a HUGE symptom of our disgustingly bloated government beauracracy.

This morning I read in the weekend Wall Street Journal that the FDA has pulled Avastin from the market for the treatment of Breast Cancer. Of course we all know the conundrum of prescribing off label, but another reference article also quotes and notes:

“Medicare will continue to cover Avastin,’’ said Brian Cook, spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The agency “will monitor the issue and evaluate coverage options as a result of action by the FDA but has no immediate plans to change coverage policies.’’ Including infusion fees, a year’s treatment with Avastin can reach $100,000.

The middle east is not the only place where it's time for an uprising that has been long coming. The government of the United States of America is so corrupt and convoluted it is time for a change. The occupy movement probably has it right. When payoffs and lobbying result in a medicare system with problems like those mentioned above even as we are teetering on the brink of insolvency the government is NOT WORKING!

Having recently read The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell and reading about the Broken Windows Theory I believe this is translating into our monetary and philosophical ethos in the United States. We are BROKE And are spending BILLIONS we don't have on WAR, unaffordable drugs and treatments, and lining our legislators pockets.

Why should anyone pay their mortgage? Why should anyone work and be a productive part of society? Why should anyone live within their means and try to get along with people who disagree with them? Despot's in the middle east, along with our politicians do NONE OF THESE THINGS! I'm starting to feel the occupy movement represents the people saying "We can clearly see everything is broken!"

It's time for a flat tax. No loopholes, and no budget for an IRS we don't need! No more insider trading on the part of our congress men and women. No more entitlements. Everyone get's the same medical care INCLUDING our government representatives. Sorry but the retirement age has to rise! Sorry medicine is NOT free and we can't give everything to everyone!

Where do we start? How do we start? The time is clearly now!

Corporate Venture Capital

2011-10-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

Right now we are sitting on PILES of $$ at big US multinational firms. I've been hearing commentary for example Berkshire Hathaway authorizing share repurchase at Buffett's discretion. I found a quick article indicating there's almost 1 trillion of CASH on corporate balance sheets. Most of this money is probably paying VERY low yields and doing NOTHING for their core business or the USA.

Then I read this article on a mountain with literally tonnes of rare earth metals inside, and very little is being done to get at these minerals while China has a monopoly and is constraining exports. Why are these guys going to the government? Many of our biggest and most successful companies depend on things like rare earth metals, infrastructure like transportation, and other things that our government seems unable to break out of gridlock and do much about.

How about a STRATEGIC fund pooled among our top 500 companies. Proportional voting based on contributions. A sort of endowment for US industry. Perhaps it could even be run as a charity. What is important is that this fund looks at things that will make the US succeed in the long term. If public school education stinks, make private schools. If the government isn't handing out enough money for mining, fund it. Need some pipelines and roads. Government is broke, but BUSINESS has money, so we'll fund it.

What would the results be? Certainly all this construction and investment will fuel jobs, and production. Not only will our biggest companies be getting the things they need, but their customer base (the US population) will be growing it's earnings and spending power. Obviously this ecosystem will also facilitate the success of small businesses which are the bread and butter of the United States, not to mention a big customer for those top 500 companies as well.

What could we do with $200 billion to $300 billion dollars INVESTED into our national economy? Nevermind that the big companies funding all of this will make $$ of their investments as well as their core business. Which corporate titans are willing to make this happen? I don't think it will take many to get the ball rolling. Let's not wait for our government. We have a LOT of really smart capable people at the top of corporate America. Let's get it done!

DNA Replication In Silico

2011-06-24T15:59:00.000-07:00

"Did you get that new Anti Virus Software?"
"For my computer?"
"No for your gene sequencer!"

So I read an interesting post on an MIT blog about Mycoplasma contaminating "the human genome." I think its a bit of a stretch, but in fact it looks like bacterial DNA has corrupted what we call the "human genome." Literally bacterial DNA has slipped in via contaminated cell cultures. Now when we test gene expression from a human sample, it appears we are also frequently checking for mycoplasma genes as well.

How does this happen? The article mentions another study that indicates a large amount of human cell contamination in samples from other species that we have sequenced. This is no surprise as biologists ARE human (right?). But this means we are slowly corrupting the data that we use to compare other species for similarity using tools like BLAST and other methodologies. On the flip side viruses and mycoplasma which are VERY small, hard to detect, and hard to filter are all over the place, and easily contaminate and multiply with laboratory samples.

So in a sense there is "replicating" DNA propagating through gene chips, sequencing tools, and our knowledge, though it doesn't QUITE meet our definition of a living organism, much like viruses and prions they are replicating simply one way or another. What's really scary is that once we start working gene therapy by for example splicing DNA into a retrovirus, which then starts re-writing our DNA with synthesized strings we could complete the loop.

This will be just another example of horizontal gene transfer. For all eternity we have had ways of exchanging DNA without literally being related, or through a myriad of epigenetic ways, by viruses which infect us by splicing their genetic material into OUR DNA and using the cellular apparatus to reproduce, occasionally leaving pieces behind, or taking a piece of our code along to the next host. This has occurred NOT just between humans, but humans and animals, plants, and other organisms some as close as the bacteria that live symbiotically in our gut.

Soon the list of things we exchange genetic code with will not just contain carbon based plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi, but carbon based silicon chips and information networks. We could have a bit error in an encoded DNA strand, or a virus that re-writes a character. Imagine a future where machines can directly affect our bodies through a myriad of ways.

Armageddon. OK, not really, but Nature is kicking our ass!

2011-05-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

Personally I have lived about half my life in San Diego or One of it's Suburbs... I did brief stints as a wee one in LA and NYC before moving to Poway when I was about 4 where I lived until I moved to Austin when I was 14. Now as a child, rain was VERY rare indeed. Poway was naturally dry and hot, which is not really odd since southern California is mostly a freakin' desert anyway. Those ten years in Poway I basically NEVER saw rain. I do recall it was a drought, and there were all kinds of water rationing and fire warnings. I guess officially my recollection is likely based on the period from 1987-1992.

Then I moved to Austin Texas in 1994. WHAT A CHANGE!!! In Poway even 100 was not really that bad. I remember getting off to the plain and feeling unable to breath from the Humidity in the air! I LOVE Austin but frankly summer's there suck. Month long periods of dense humidity where it's still often 80 degrees when the sun is about to COME UP!

Where am I going with this? Well nature is a fickle friend. I noticed when I went to Austin for a couple weddings (avoiding parking garages at all costs....) and while I LOVED the weather, apparently that dryness was the result of massive drought. My friend Ginni's wedding was actually on the Lake and you could see how low the water level was. Apparently it is the driest 7 months on record!

Here in California we've been complaining of wet weather all winter, and we have been getting HAMMERED with snow in the Sierra Nevada range and other mountains. I read in the LA Times that too much snow has resulted in a 12% DECLINE in skiers because people couldn't get to the slopes, or felt unsafe.

Nature has been showing it's teeth in even louder ways so far this year. We have recently had a rash of tornadoes in the South that easily qualifies for the biggest natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which took the lives of 1800 people and destroyed New Orleans along with tons of other negative effects. So far 481 Americans have been killed by tornados this spring! News reports indicate 116 or 117 people have been killed in a recent tornado in Joplin! While researching sources for this article, I found a post that was making a similar observation of recent natural phenomenon's excesses.

Earlier this year a massive 9.0 earthquake hit Japan, along with a massive Tsunami which caused enough trouble on it's own. THEN came problems with radioactive contamination, and resulting collateral problems to energy security for Japan. Currently in the United States after bad Hurricanes, and the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana is currently under historical flooding problems, and the Army Corps of Engineers is working hard to save two major cities, New Orleans and Baton Rouge from flooding at the cost of flooding mammoth swatch of countryside and farms.

What's coming next I wonder? 2011 promised to be an interesting year in many ways, but I'll be keeping a close eye on nature!

Future Tech II: Supersolids, Meta Materials, Varying Fine Structure Constant, and Maxwell's Demon!

2010-11-24T21:35:00.000-08:00

Interesting things are afoot these days. It's very exciting. Medicine, technology, software & networking, neuroscience, genetics, and many fields are blowing up. Right now however we are experiencing some massive discoveries in the areas of fundamental physics and our understanding of materials. About 6 weeks ago I sent my friend, Aaron Smith of the university of Arizona this blog post on Maxwell's Demon. I had not heard of this "thought experiment" but it was pretty cool.

Basically in the blog post they reference an article in Nature - Physics about some theoretical physicists who have come up with a more concrete example of an age old problem known as "Maxwell's Demon." Basically it's a thought experiment that seeks to throw a wrench in the second law of thermodynamics. Aaron recommends an article from Charles Bennett in Sciam, “Demons, Engines, and the Second Law,” and I can find another interesting pdf from Bennett. Kind of like a math proof, this article reminds me that much of science is figuring out why something doesn't make sense.

Many people have poked holes in the theory/postulation, and Sziliard, a Hungarian physicist, basically showed mathematically that INFORMATION is ENERGY! That's what I think is super cool. The Japanese scientists basically created an experiment that demonstrates this in the real world. So not like knowing the content of a book, but to some degree ENERGY (or the power required to operate storage) could be converted in to energy. Unfortunately, it would take more information than can fill just about every computer in the world to power a spaceship, but nano-machines would require a reasonable amount and might someday be powered by “information-heat engines.” The experiment appears to have roughly converted with 28% efficiency according to the economist. (This doesn’t take into account the measuring device and feedback control, which when accounted for pushes the efficiency very far into the negative. It is still a proof of principle because those energy costs can theoretically be made arbitrarily small.)

This reminds me of how a black hole sucking everything in would violate conservation of energy (Huh? Don’t think that is right. Black holes gain energy when they suck in energ and they lose energy when they radiate.) Hawking Radiation is an example of how particles and anti particles materialize on opposite sides of the event horizon saving energy as it imparts momentum to one of the pair. Or something like that.

Couple more interesting things I read lately.

Not sure about a quantum supersolid, but it sounds sick. We know about superconductors, and other crazy states of matter: quark gluon plasma, superfluids, and recently demonstrated trapped antihydrogen atoms at the LHC, are all things that probably don't happen in the real world outside of exotic places like the event horizon of a black hole, crazy collapsing stars and nebulae, or early in the life of the universe. Who KNOWS what's coming soon on so many fronts. Gonna be exciting times soon.

Alpha a.k.a Fine Structure constant, could vary with time or space. Could be a major discovery and would require a theory beyond the standard model of particle physics and cosmology, which would point a finger directly at string theory.

I'm sure you heard buzz about metamaterials, and some recent stuff about a suit that could seemingly warp space by changing the speed of light. I'm sure we have some interesting things to learn from proving why this eventually will not be made, or if it can be, even cooler.

Dirty Fuel, Dirty Ships, Dirty Air

2010-11-24T21:22:00.000-08:00

Recently have been reading about how dirty our system of seaborne transportation is. There's a lot of numbers out there, but many are confusing. From an article from the Guardian which I consider reputable:

- 1.12bn tonnes of CO₂, or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of the main greenhouse gas!!!

Dude. We know CO2 is bad. What's bad is that there are some VERY easy things we can do to cut these numbers, as well as pollution. From the New York Times, shipping company Maersk cut their fuel usage by 30% (and most CO2 emissions come from fuel usage) JUST BY CUTTING the speed of their ships in half! This article also observes that we could cut Fuel/CO2 emissions by American cars by 20% going 10mph slower from 55 to 65. I say do it, and stop building roads. It's definitely an indirect way to encourage more efficient public transportation. Imagine if we could confine heavy transport to certain times of day in big cities easy traffic, and big truck's fuel usage.

The International Maritime Organization, is a UN body responsible for creating rules and regulations for international waters including policies for pollution reduction.They have passed rules which will require the sulphur content of fuels used by ships in certain areas to be reduced. Alas this doesn't apply in other areas. I'd love to see cleaner fuel everywhere, as well as a reduction in speed by cargo/tanker vessels. There's a lot we can do here without a ton of technology! Technology is cool too. A company has devised a massive sail for cargo ships, and all ships can use solar power for electric motors with zero emissions!

The Holographic Principle and Information

2010-10-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

So I read a couple interesting developments in the end all physics category recently. One big one was the demonstration of something like Hawking Radiation. This radiation was predicted by Stephen Hawking (hence the name) based on quantum particles materializing on each side of an event horizon of a black hole. A virtual event horizon was created using some interesting physical properties in a contrived way. The reason this is such a big deal is that the notion of a black hole "destroying" information (i.e. swallowing EVERYTHING at the event horizon) violates basic accepted principles of conservation. This good article from Scientific American covers the subject in greater depth.

I emailed my friend, Dr Aaron Smith, a physicist at the University of Arizona a post I wrote about the state of technology, and innovation as I see it a few months ago. Ironically my note got lost and he found it a bit later, and was telling me about the holographic principle, which I think is best demonstrated at the boundary of a black hole, and even the boundary of the universe. I asked him to write on the subject for me, and his expose, is below.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Holography and information are two key notions that are beginning to invade the world of physics. Beware, mind-melting may occur if you read further!

In short, the holographic principle in physics says that a given theory in D-dimensions is equivalent to a different theory that describes the D-1 dimensional boundary of that D-dimensional space. So, the physical principles that describe our universe must be equivalent to a different set of physical principles that describe the behavior of the boundary of our universe. Confused yet? A convenient way to think about this is that everything in the universe can be represented as information, or encoded somehow, and everything on the boundary of the universe is just another representation of this same information, encoded differently. A radical interpretation is emerging:  the universe may be made up entirely of information...
What realm of physics did this bizarre realization emerge from? Black hole thermodynamics. But before diving in, we need a quick review of entropy.

Entropy is a macroscopic property of a system originating from the microscopic details. Given a collection of particles with macroscopic properties(temperature, pressure, volume) there is a specific number of ways of reconfiguring the particles while still maintaining the same macro-properties. For example, take a gas in a tank at high temperature: if one particle moves slightly faster and another moves slightly slower than the micro-configuration is different but the macro-properties are unchanged.

Entropy is simply the number of ways that a system can be reconfigured and still have the same macro-properties (actually, entropy = logarithm of the number of ways, but that is irrelevant for now).

Entropy is intimately related to information: high entropy means it takes more information to specify the micro-details of a system.  Entropy and information may in fact be one and the same.

It turns out that the entropy of an isolated system can never decrease, which basically means that information can never be erased. If you disagree because you erase information on your computer every day, then consider the fact that there is far more information in your computer than the bits you know of; there are all the details about every electron flowing throughout, the tiny amounts of radiation released, and so on. So when you erase something on your computer, the information isn't truly gone, it has just been re-encoded in the microscopic properties of particles and fields in and around your computer. But don't worry about your security, extracting that re-encoded information is next-to-impossible.

And now, onto black holes. A black hole has mass, charge, and angular momentum(they can spin) and has only one unique configuration once you specify those three parameters--at least that's what general relativity tells us(the "no hair theorem"). This suggests that a black hole has very low entropy since very little information is needed to fully describe it. This leads to a disturbing paradox. When a system with high entropy falls into a black hole, the entropy of that system must disappear and the information describing it would thus be erased. This cannot be, as it violates sacred laws of physics. The resolution is that the entropy of a black hole is actually quite large, ask Stephen Hawking if you don't believe me, and so it must have microscopic parts that can be reconfigured in many different ways and leave the bulk properties unchanged. General relativity is thus missing some very important details.

This is all pretty abstract but what does it mean? One more detour, first.

The boundary of a black hole, the event horizon, is a region in which space-time is so warped that the interior and exterior are not causally connected; anything inside can never affect anything outside. Hmmm, weird. When a system falls into a black hole, an outside observer never actually sees it get passed the boundary! This is because of that warping of space-time. An outside observer sees the infalling system get closer to the surface, eventually becoming a distortion of the surface. The infalling system goes right through the boundary, no problem, and sees itself in the interior but can no longer see anything outside. This means that the information describing the infalling system is now contained within the black hole and is also written onto the boundary somehow.

Here is the crux, folks: a description of the boundary of a black hole is informationally equivalent to a description of the interior. At last, holography!

This holographic understanding of black holes has led to many new ideas in physics and has the potential to revolutionize the discipline. Lets explore some more of the realm of holography.

A direct consequence of black hole entropy is that a given region of space-time has a upper bound on its total entropy. In other words, you can't cram an infinite amount of information in a finite region of space. This 'information capacity' is highly suggestive. Space-time itself must be indivisible on some length scale; the universe must be truly digital! Current estimates suggest that a spherical region of space, one meter in radius, can hold a maximum of about 10^70 bits of information(1 with 70 zeros after it)! But remember, the universe is holographic, so it is really the area of the region of space we must consider, not the volume; two volumes of space will have a different information capacity if their boundaries have a different area. In fact,the information capacity of a volume of space is simply proportional to the area.

Another consequence. Modern particle physics(AKA quantum field theory) must be extremely redundant. The standard model of particle physics says there are many different particles each with a large number of internal degrees of freedom. A simple calculation shows that the amount of information that can be encoded in a region of space, using fundamental particles such as electrons and quarks, is far greater than what holographic reasoning suggests. Therefore, particle physics is not a fundamental theory, but an effective theory in which the true information content of the universe is encoded redundantly. What is the fundamental theory then? The best known candidate is string theory, in which all things in existence can be broken down into very tiny little vibrating strings; an electron is fundamentally a vibrating string and a quark is too, just vibrating differently.

Gravity, dark energy, dark matter, cosmic inflation, the big bang, the nature of time, and many other ideas in physics have seen the holographic principle lend an interesting perspective. It is all very cutting edge stuff and a lot of speculation is going on right now.

So what was the definition of the holographic principle? Well, it is too poorly understood to give a rigorous definition at this point in time. But, as holographic ideas help us understand to better understand physics, we in turn better understand the mysterious holographic principle. The race is on to figure it out, and will likely happen by the current generation of physicists. Keep your eyes and ears open folks!

For more, read the Scientific American article written by highly regarded physicist Jacob Bekenstein. He is the one who originally proposed in the 70s that black holes have large entropy, proportional to the area of the event horizon.
http://www.sufizmveinsan.com/fizik/holographic.html

The Wikipedia page also has some good insight and citations for further reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the end that's a pretty cool reductionist viewpoint as I see it. The universe is nothing but our observed reality, of information. Light, and fundamental particles (gravity loops, quarks, strings whatever) are all quantized, because they are just information as we see them. Of course there's lots of details, but after a century of basic physics becoming increasingly convoluted, we are ready for some understanding and simplification. Let's see what happens.

"Carpe Diem"

2010-09-08T22:40:00.000-07:00

How does one, exactly, seize the day? I think it's a pretty complicated balance. In triathlon you balance consistency with a focused plan that gradually prepares you for race day incrementally, focusing on ALL the aspects that congeal into a passionate performance with perfect execution. I learned a lot about life as I slowly accepted you couldn't just train hard all the time without rest, recovery, and good nutrition.

So the reality is that you can't just go hard all the time just about anywhere. I like to say that even a Ferrari needs an oil change! We all know the law of diminishing returns in Economics terms. Increase any one factor of production alone, like labor, and your rate of return diminishes. It's all about balance. If you build a faster car, without better breaks, better handling, better cooling, and all the other things that matter, you will end up with a car that slams into the wall.

I believe it's very American to think "bigger, better, faster, more!" but not exclusively. As an Engineer its very easy to get sucked into doing too much. What a lot of people don't tell you, is that when you don't focus on balance, and recovery, YOUR utility decreases, just like they postulate in economics. I had to learn this the hard way getting burned out at a few jobs in my time. One thing I was always good at was going hard. Of course that's only half the equation. You can only be on "output" for so long before you need some "input" time. What I learned gradually as I grew, was learning how to be ready to POUNCE!

In one of my favorite books of fiction as a child, The Celestine Prophecy, some guru comes around and tells the protagonist that you should never feel bad, for being lucky. For taking an opportunity that presents itself. "There are no coincidences" he says, and I think it's a good way to approach some parts of your life. The problem is, if you are running around talking on your cell phone, overloaded with work and duties, and never stop to smell the roses, you will just WALK RIGHT BY some of the most amazing things in the world. A very interesting social experiment by a famous musician, Joshua Bell, is a great example of this. The reality is it takes a lot of work to keep your life simple, and open enough to truly embrace the world as a source of inspiration, while devoting yourself fully to your passion, but that is the key.

I read this excellent article last week on keeping your life simple to allow you to release your passion.

http://zenhabits.net/cultivating-passion/. I like some of the points they the author highlights about leaving free time in your schedule, or "underscheduling" as he calls it. I also deeply believe that much of this time needs to be "off the grid." When I'm off the grid I am unfindable, often to people's frustration. That doesn't mean I'm not with some people sometimes, but I'm not letting the buzz of the world interfere with my experience. Not only must you be rested, and have free time, but just as important is the "go hard" part of getting your work done. How can you focus on the beautiful world around you if you are always worried about things you didn't finish?

Alas, once again, it comes down to balance. I know that the tightrope between work hard, and play hard, will forever be a challenge to walk.

The Tao of Triathlon

2010-08-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

I recently read a few articles by Shane Eversfield I found through an email from USA Triathlon. I often write about about the physical, spiritual, and mental aspects of endurance training. I asked him for a guest post, as I feel he has a lot of insight to offer.

Movement patterns profoundly affect the brain's function. Case in point: I practice T'ai Chi daily. Using a book briefly in the beginning to "estimate the basics", I have continued to practice and refine the movements on my own for over 30 years now. Primary guidance comes from a diligent quest for perfect balance and orientation - a deep challenge as I move very slowly through the form, often with my eyes closed. After 8 years of self-guidance, I read a book about Taoism, an ancient Chinese way of life inextricably linked to T'ai Chi. The yin-yang symbol? Taoist. It expresses the cosmic dance of polar opposites - essentially, the animation of our universe. Not really a religion, or a philosophy, "Tao" translates as "the Way". Engaging an inquisitive "beginner's mind", the Taoist disciple embarks on a lifelong quest to investigate functional principles of our universe and to diligently train their application. Taoism is a way of perceiving, responding to and moving through the world around us. So is Triathlon.

As I read this book on Taoism, I realized that I was... well, Taoist. This didn't happen from reading ancient texts or from living in a remote Chinese village with Taoist sages. (Heck, I was a young hippy-artist living in the northeast US.) My Tao transformation occurred through the movements of T'ai Chi. Taoism is now intrinsic to the way I think, perceive and respond - to the way I live. So is Triathlon.

As triathletes, we're on a path to enjoy and master three basic activities from childhood. Each of these involves a repetitive movement pattern, coordinating opposite arm and leg movements through pelvic core stabilization. (Yes, even cycling.) Equally important, each of these childhood activities requires a unique and complex orientation with gravity. This is profound, given that up to ninety percent of your neurological energy is invested in balance - orienting your body to gravity. (Contemplate balance and orientation deeply while you train.) Like T'ai Chi, each of these basic childhood activities affects the way we perceive and interact with ourselves and the world. Put ‘em together, and you've got a powerful kinetic trinity. Tao of Triathlon.

Just like juggling, triathlon is a feat of timing, dexterity and balance, dynamically orchestrating three elements. Training effectively towards ambitious performance goals requires vigilance and honesty in the ongoing assessment of one's strengths and weaknesses. It demands a continuous response that is equally evidence-based science and creative intuition. Humility, self-honesty, curiosity and knowledge are essential.

Human nature provides us with nesting instincts; we gravitate towards our strengths, stay within the comfort zone, and avoid the dark forests of uncertainty. Well, there's no "nesting" in multisport. We're all familiar with that humbling "day-of-reckoning" feeling on race morning, as we toe the line with pale, tender feet. I wonder, is that what makes us so friendly and cooperative in the transition area before the big showdown?

Tao says embrace vulnerability and imbalance as opportunities for improvement well ahead of race day. Triathletes who are weak cyclists often elect to participate in group rides with experienced road cyclists. Criticism, embarrassment and humility be damned, the rewards of experience gained outweigh the rookie's discomfort. Drop the fear; embrace uncertainty as the ultimate opportunity.

In the real world, versatility ultimately triumphs specialization: Change is inevitable.

Beyond the relentless quest for swimming, biking and running mastery, experienced triathletes know there is a fourth element in triathlon: the art of transition. More than a quick gear and clothing change; it's an instant transition from sleek efficient swimmer, to strong efficient cyclist, to swift efficient runner. In under a minute, it's possible to transform from one movement pattern, from one orientation with gravity, from one integration with equipment to another one entirely.

Athletic excellence in a single sport trains mastery of a single identity. The swift transitions of multisport challenge the athlete to fully engage, and then completely detach from each identity. Ego is the collection of identities one assumes in the roles of every day life. A well-balanced individual chooses his/her identities functionally - as tools in a constructive, brilliant life. Dis-functionality is a strong attachment to a specific identity, an unwillingness to let go of one role when it no longer serves in the moment.

A ludicrous example of such an attachment: Tommy Triathlete rolls into T2, fastest bike split of the day, and transitions to run. However, Tommy just can't let go of his prowess as a cyclist and insists on wearing bike shoes and carrying his bike for the entire run. Even with the fastest bike split, that finish line is a long way off lugging a bike. Multisport transition develops a functional relationship with ego through the capacity and the will to engage and detach.

Function and brilliance - Tao of Triathlon: Swim, bike, run. Balance, orient, transition.

This article originally appeared in Hammer Nutrition Endurance News, Issue #69. Copyright 2010 Shane Eversfield

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Check out Shane's book, Zendurance. Shane also writes regularly for Total Immersion, a popular system for teaching swimming.
http://www.totalimmersion.net/store/books/zendurance.html

Infared -vs- Thermal Junction Temperature Sensing Part 2

2010-08-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

Thermal Junction/Thermocouple Sensing

Typical semiconductor based temperature sensing is based of current flowing through some sort of thermal junction. This junction is ideally two dissimilar metals, where the voltage will be proportional to the temperature of the environment, after taking into account time lag of heat absorption.

Voltage/Temperature Relationship

Typically there is a nonlinear relationship, and the main limitation is accuracy. “System errors of less than one degree Celisius can be difficult to achieve.” The relationship between the temperature difference and output voltage of a thermocouple is derived from a comples summation of coeffeicients based on metal type, and results in a typically non-linear relationship.

K Type Thermocouples

Type K Thermocouples are the most common general purpose TCs used. They are made of a chromel-alumel junction with a sensitivity of approx. 41uV/ C. According to the Omega NIST reference, K type thermocouples have a maximum error of 2.2C with 0.5C being more typical.

Cold Junction Compensation (CJC)

Usually, to calibrate a thermocouple, a method similar to sound noise cancellation is used. An independent junction is maintained at a fixed temperature. More commonly a thermistor, or diode (like a PN where the current varied minutely with temperature) is used. Frequently as well, temperature sensors and a look up table can be used to extract the CJC temperature indirectly.

Some examples, and a thorough treatment of circuits for this purpose are included in the Maxim Application Note cited below “Implementing cold-Junction Compensation in Thermocouple Applications.”

Observations

Thermocouples have a very non-linear relationship to temperature. they are versatile, and usable for measurements which will frequently cover a large range. They are more commonly used in industrial applications where such temperature variation is more common.

For more accurate measurements, it is common to use a resistance thermometer, which are commonly referred to as RTDs, and made of platinum. For applications under 600 degrees C they are slowly eroding the use of thermocouples due to dramatically improved accuracy and repeatability.

Future Tech: Quantum Redux

2010-06-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite Physics topics was always "Particle in a Box." Mostly I like the name. It's just fun to say. This weekend I started explaining the concept to somebody before I got distracted on a tangent, but it got me thinking. Classical physics is nice, neat, and well buttoned up. Yet we are now entering uncharted territory in the Subatomic Realm. I have literally be in the thick of this acceleration, or Inflection point in the words of Raymond Kurzweil, who wrote an amazing book about the acceleration of technology development, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. He points out the incredible, and increasing rate or technological change dictates that it will soon be the dominating force of evolution in our lives.

10 years ago we sequenced the human genome. The biology front is certainly exciting. By some accounts, Craig Venter and his team have created a fully synthetic bacterium. Companies like Affymetrix, Illumina, and others have created rapid sequencing platforms we can use for countless applications. I used Affymetrix Arrays working with Justin Borevitz when he was at the Salk Institute to investigate Alternative Splicing. The company where I work, Cyntellect, has developed a line of Cellular Analysis Instruments which can be used for Stem Cell, and Cancer Applications which allows you to manipulate, analyze, and quantify cells used for therapeutic purposes, drug discovery, or drug production.

On the Neuroscience front, IBM already built Deep Blue, the first machine that could beat a grandmaster at chess. Now they are working on a machine, "Watson" to win at Jeopardy by fundamentally understanding natural language! We already have Autonomous cars that can handle urban and outdoor environments courtesy of Darpa, who also funded a project I worked on to build Soccer playing Segway Robots at the Neuroscience Institute a few years ago. I also happen to believe that in a short time a combination of Memristors, literally silicon neurons, and Quantum Computers will allow us to create systems which can process both logical, and analog problems with incredible capacity.

Harnessing true AI, and cellular machinery, certainly is dependent on nano tech. The Space Elevator is now literally possible due to the strength of carbon nano tubes, which also promise to make incredibly efficient, and compact transistors. 3D holographic chips promise to revolutionize storage space abilities from todays amazing multi level DVD and Blue Ray Discs. MEMS machines are now being built using semiconductor manufacturing techniques. At Luxtera we worked on optical structures built directly into silicon, and built 40G optical cables incorporating holographic optimal inputs, and used a Mach Zender Interferometer to modulate the light. MEMS Accelerometers, Gyroscopes, and Oscillators, and other devices are incredibly cheap and have no moving parts, so they use very little power and rarely break. How do you think those Wii controllers last so long and are so cheap? How do you think a $100 8 Mega Pixel camera now has motion compensation built in?

So on to the Quantum world, and Modern Physics.

When I was a kid, somewhere around 10-12 my family rented an RV and we drove to Canada and Back. During this trip I got my hands on a first edition copy of The Illustrated Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. This book had a lot of content on matters of cosmology, the big bang and other classical phsyics questions. It also covered relativity, which was the first great non intuitive scientific theory, as well as the underpinnings of Quantum Theory. I believe this book triggered me to become deeply interested in fundamental physics, and later the whole evolution of Quantum Mechanics. From then on I was often found reading interesting, and cutting edge physics books. I never felt drawn into wanting to research, but felt that it was a fascinating subject. Later when I was 19, I took Quantum Physics with Vivek Sharma at UCSD. This guy was SO passionate about the subject, he had a good sense of humor, and was a good teacher. It was his lecture on "Particle In a Box" that I always remember. When I read this New Scientist article today about Quantum Machinery I figured it was time to write an article about Quantum Theory.

Last week I wrote the first part of an article covering the art of temperature sensing, specifically using an infrared temperature sensor, which works off the principle of black boday radiation. A Black Body, is a idealized notion in physics which absorbs all incident radiation completely. This hypothetical notion, in the early 1900s, gave rise to the "ultraviolet catastrophe" which was basically if the Raleigh-Jeans law held true, and object should emit INFINITE energy in the ultraviolet spectrum. Einstein noted that this issue would be resolved by using the notion of QUANTIZING light, which was earlier given by Max Plank for unrelated reasons. This notion of Quantization of light, and really all physical properties was the birth of Quantum Mechanics, and Quantum Theory. A weird world where things don't make sense. A real twilight zone under what seemed to be a universe of sense.

Ahhh now particle in a box. This notion is one of the few which can be stated analytically, so it's one of the first ones you learn. It is also the theory which explains why electrons can only circle the nucleus at certain energy levels (resulting in the emission of discrete QUANTA of energy, in the form of light), which underpins our understanding of chemical bonding behavior. My favorite side effect which I understand via the less idealized notion of a potential well, is, that due to the particle-wave duality, particles can probabilistically tunnel through barriers due to their wave behavior. This "Quantum Tunneling" property is what allows the plug on every device you plug in to work despite a layer of oxidization caused by the atmosphere.

This subject is throughly argued, and hotly debated. It's still a great area of mystery. I could write more for hours, but I figure that's a pretty good introduction. Some other interesting articles....

Quantum Cryptography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography

Wormholes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole

Quantum Teleportation
http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/

Large Hadron Collider
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/

Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/

Infared -vs- Thermal Junction Temperature Sensing Part 1.

2010-06-14T23:34:00.000-07:00

Recently I came upon a situation where I needed to take very detailed temperature measurements across a large number of locations to validate and environmental control system. Alas this was a subject I know very little about. In my scenario I was attempting to validate the spread across numerous points using a series of thermocouples to evaluate 2 optical temperature sensors in an environmental control system. So I had to do some research.

In my previous experience there had been 2 scenarios in which you measured temperature. For embedded devices a digital temperature sensor that came calibrated (like a DS1820 from Maxim/Dallas Semi) was usually easy to use, and could be easily bit banged with any old micro controller, meaning code the bus in C as opposed to needing hardware support like I2C/TWI etc. In IC design situations Bandgap Voltage/Voltage Proportional To Absolute Temperature (VPAT). In my experience they were usually used to give "perfect" reference currents for delicate analog circuits like the Optical chips Luxtera Makes. Of course that's until process varaiation, but that's outside the scope here.

So I will start with the fun stuff. Infrared Optical Temperature sensing is basically a practical application of the Black Body Radiation theory that was a first big step from classical physics to the quantum era. Nice! In a Blackbody, all light is absorbed, and re-emitted as a thermal spectrum. To me this is basically turning order into entropy. We know that the spectrum of a flame changes depending on its temperature. In fact the spectrum, and spectral peak of emitted light correlate well with the temperature of an object.

You can use the Stephen Boltzman Equation, add in an emissivity factor, and get pretty good measurements.
Emissivity is basically a measure of how ideal a material is for this type of measurement.

Typical Emissivity Values

Nickel	0.05
Aluminum Paint	0.45
Asbestos: Fabric	0.78
Plastic: acrylic, clear	0.94
Plastic: Black	0.95

As you can see there is quite a range. Nickel is terrible. Graphite is almost ideal. In our case clear and black plastic also happen to be pretty good. There are other factors (good application note) like sample to spot ratio ("dot" from beam small compared to sample size), and getting the beam close to the sample to reduce stray radiation. With a good material the results are very accurate assuming theres no dirty air, smoke, stray light, and some other pretty obvious things. The part we're using claims 0.5C accuracy which is identical to the DS1820, and the results are instant (or basically the speed of light and a look up table), while the 1820 has thermal mass which must equalize with it's surroundings.

In part 2 I will examine Thermocouple based temperature sensing in comparison.

Denialism and FUD!

2010-05-20T18:18:00.000-07:00

FUD. Fear Uncertainty, and Doubt. A term used in tech circles. Intel, for example, was purported to have used FUD tactics to intimidate competitors, and the market. They would announce a product aggressively and encourage people to WAIT instead of buying competitors products. Then mysteriously these big products would get delayed or cancelled. Who knows. Products get delayed. Also, SCO -vs- IBM exemplified another form, where SCO made a lot of claims with NO concrete details. Mathematically this equates to throwing out unproven corner cases as arguments, before they are substantiated.

I notice this behavior pattern in people a lot. They are angry, usually for no reason to do with you, and attack something lame. It's usually a good sign that you shouldn't take it personally. A few times my dad has yelled at me for swimming too much. What the hell? Oh, wait.....you're mad about something else. I look for this in myself. When I use a lame excuse to get emotional, I know I should pull back.

Global Warming. Fact Versus Fiction. THERE IS A TON ON BOTH SIDES. Clearly there are a TON of lame excuses to counter global warming details. BUT we know a lot of truths. CO2 DOES increase temperatures. Temps are going up, but this has happened before. The Urban Heat Island Effect skews these readings. And alas, correlation does NOT equal causality. I want to take care of the environment, but I don't think SCARING people into doing it is the right way.

I read article about denialism in New Scientist. They talk about how people get stuck denying things that are obvious. Including Global Warming, though again I stipulate, if you are saying "temps are going up" I agree 100%. If you say "Humans are causing temps to go up" then there is a lot of room to debate.

Whatever they are denying, denial movements have much in common with one another, not least the use of similar tactics (see "How to be a denialist"). All set themselves up as courageous underdogs fighting a corrupt elite engaged in a conspiracy to suppress the truth or foist a malicious lie on ordinary people. This conspiracy is usually claimed to be promoting a sinister agenda: the nanny state, takeover of the world economy, government power over individuals, financial gain, atheism.

I dig that quote. I always laugh when people justify conspiracy theories. They (New Scientist) also comment on the limitation of some types of arguments:

Similarly, global warming, evolution and the link between tobacco and cancer must be taken on trust, usually on the word of scientists, doctors and other technical experts who many non-scientists see as arrogant and alien.

So a call to action. For years people didn't believe cigarettes were bad because of lame excuses. We KNOW texting and using cell phones is dangerous when driving, yet I see people still doing it all the time. For years we had people who could only call Bush "stupid," like we now have people who just call Obama a "Socialist" instead of arguing policy. There's a lot of this kind of thinking out there, and many people buy in to it, ESPECIALLY in politics. In Buddhist parlance this results from Dependant thinking as opposed to Independent thinking. Let's spend our time contemplating the REAL world, not the world people want us to see.

I should confess this post was inspired by my friend Greta in Brazil, and reading this Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, on Self-Reliance.

5/24/10:
Woah. Check this out. This guy is an awesome skeptic that Seems to embody my thoughts on this subject well:

http://www.michaelshermer.com/

He's got cool stuff about intelligent design, and other pseudoscience subjects.

Roundup Resistant Weeds ATTACK!

2010-05-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

I was reading coverage in the NY times about how Roundup resistant weeds are proliferating. This is similar in cause and effect to overuse of antibiotics accelerating development of resistant bacteria. I believe this is once again an example of the shortsightedness on the part of the farming industry, but logical in a competitive market.

Once again I have to go back to natural capitalism for some startling statistics, and information about the state of our farming industry. Our farming methodologies are inefficient with regards to energy consumption:

American farms have doubled their direct and indirect energy efficiency since 1978. They use more efficiently manufactured fertilizer, diesel engines, bigger and multifunction farm machinery, better drying and irrigation processes and controls, and herbicides instead of plowing to control weeds.

And also even more worrisome is that we are destroying the genetic diversity of our crop species:

Clear-cutting at the microscopic level of DNA may be creating the gravest problem of all. The world's farming rests on an extraordinarily narrow genetic base. Of the 200,000 species of wild plants, notes biogeographer Jared Diamond, "only a few thousands are eaten by humans, and just a few hundred of those have been more or less domesticated." Three-quarters of the world's food comes from only seven crop species, wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, barley, cassava (manioc), and sorghum.

Not only are we reducing genetic diversity, but also our "single crop mindset" is creating fertile breeding grounds for prime predators, and a disaster waiting to happen:

The single-crop mentality both ignores nature's tendency to foster diversity and worsens the ancient battle against pests. Monocultures are rare in nature, in part because they create paradises for plant diseases and insects, as science writer Janine Benyus puts it, they are like equipping a burglar with the keys to every house in the neighborhood; they're an all-you-can-eat restaurant for pests. Disease already damages or destroys 13 percent of the world's crops, insects 15 percent, and weeds 12 percent; in all, two-fifths of the world's harvest is lost in the fields, and after some more spoils, nearly half never reaches a human mouth.

Hopefully we can be ahead of the curve on this one, before disaster strikes
.
5/16/2010
Another example. Recent New Scientist coverage of a Nature article about new pests evolving to attack Genetically modified crops:

The rise of mirids has driven Chinese farmers back to pesticides - they are currently using about two-thirds as much as they did before Bt cotton was introduced. As mirids develop resistance to the pesticides, Wu expects that farmers will soon spray as much as they ever did.

First offshore wind farm

2010-05-04T18:38:00.000-07:00

I already read an article dissing the fact that the first wind farm was built in bureaucracy central (east coast), versus the gulf by Texas (no rules basically). Still this announcement of a big off shore wind farm being built is pretty exciting.

As usual there were a bunch of complaints (this time Indians, not environmentalists), but luckily we were able to navigate the rough waters and get it done. I don't want to assign blame, or credit politically. I'm just happy it happened.

Simple Sustainability

2010-04-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

Wow. I just came across this site linking from an article I read on Slashdot. Sort of a place to post modern ideas on resource and energy efficiency. Just a couple of articles on inhabitat.com were awesome enough that I wanted to share the site immediately.

A pretty awesome eco-integrated concept building, I would love to see actually get built. Could we get some financing for projects that will reduce our energy footprint, and pay themselves back?

And this one about chemical sniffing phones is an awesome idea. What if everyone was just assigned random chemicals to have their phone sense? I think we could justify getting sensors for industrial waste, and other problem pollutants as well.

This story about paint on connected solar cells is pretty interesting too. They comment that it's not yet commercially proven, but a pretty awesome concept.

All posted today ?!?

Toyota Redux

2010-04-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

OK. So we all knew SOME people were making shit up when they claimed their prius, or other toyota behaved strangely. Still you gotta figure SOME other people were telling the truth. Right?

I guess Toyota is looking at criminal negligence charges for not investigating the incidents, and writing them off as driver error. Then I read this, and if these stats are the naked truth. I am now suspicious:

These incidents were highly correlated with three things: being elderly, being short, and parking (or leaving a parking space)

Wow. So we all know old people can't drive. We (I know directly) also know that young people can't drive well. Yes there are exceptions to every rule. The point is now I think it was mostly a bunch of hype. I read a few articles saying Toyota was still denying that anything was wrong, and I believe it will stay as such until we have a root cause.

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July 14th Update.
Preliminary results from DOT testing (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703834604575364871534435744.html)
indicates that the Toyota "acceleration" problem appears to be operator error, as backed up by the information presented early on above. It's almost depressing.

Climate Prediction Accuracy

2010-03-07T16:11:00.000-08:00

It is the way of the world. The law of large numbers meets Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Small samples are hard to predict statistically, and large samples are easier. The more exactly you try to predict something, the harder it gets. The farther ahead you try to predict, the less accurate you become. Measuring, or producing something will ALWAYS have a tolerance built in. More accuracy or power means more expensive, more complicated, more time, more money.

If it's raining outside, I can accurately guess 99 out of 100 times that it will be raining in 5 minutes. OK, maybe not when it's on and off like right now in San Diego, but that's beside the point. 3 days ago when I checked weather.com it said there was a 30% chance of rain yesterday and today. It's been raining the whole time! The farther ahead we go, the more the law of unintended consequences takes root. Here in San Diego we're in the middle of a BUNCH of climates, near the ocean, have things like Santa Ana winds come in some times, and a lot of water dumping off the mountains to the North and East.

The point is that no number really means anything without context and accuracy being specified. So while I accept that there has been some warming of the climate, I also know it's happened before (geological evidence points to this) . When I read this physics blog posting about an increase in the predicted number of hurricanes, I became predictably annoyed. What does this really mean? Nothing. We have ZERO history prediction history. The blog even highlights that:

That could help to solve an important climate change puzzle but before greater reliance can be placed on Ehrlich's, it needs to show its colours by accurately forecasting the numbers of hurricanes in the next few years. Its predictions do not make for pleasant reading.

I'm calling for people to begin to post their historical accuracy with their predictions. Now that science and politics are so interrelated, we need quality control in science just like any other endeavor. I know hurricanes only happen yearly, but if your "model" is only historical, and you can't post how accurate you've been in the past, your just as good as the tarot card reader.

Exercise and The Brain. The Body-Mind Connection!

2010-03-06T12:02:00.000-08:00

I have been doing endurance exercise as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I usually went on a day hike and weekend backpack every month with my scout troop. We usually did a week in the grand canyon and two weeks in the sierras every year. Think two weeks in the sierras is rough? I lived in Europe many summers with my grandparents, where you walked EVERYWHERE, and travelling with my parents involved a LOT of walking. And I swam. A few times a year, my whole life.

The last few years I have been on my triathlon Odyssey. To me it was all about the Mind-Body connection. The discipline required to train regularly, go to bed early, and so many other details that go into a successful race at any distance for most people. Also understanding how to periodize and stress your body in an effective way to prepare for an event gave me a similar feeling to the process of preparing and performing in piano competitions as a child. What I realized recently is that it works in the other direction as well. There is a VERY POWERFUL Body-Mind connection!

I have told people for years how the time I have swimming, biking, running help me think better, more peacefully, and in a more focused fashion. I sleep better, eat better, chill better, not TO exercise, but BECAUSE I exercise. I also think doing yoga for 13 years now as well as tai qi, and other martial arts have all crystallized into an amazing set of experiences to draw on to keep my (poor injured) self whole, and heal injuries effectively.

Last year I suffered a critical head injury that left me in a coma for several days. While I suffered for months, my recovery was truly miraculous, and surprised literally EVERY doctor I saw for 6 months. Still, the first month I head such bad headaches I was taking morphine twice a day. For months I could not handle loud noise, or bright lights, or do a LOT of things I used to take for granted.

I consider it lucky that the accident happened 2 weeks after wildflower when I was fit, AND particularly rested. When it comes to recovery however, literally the day I was off pain killers, I was back on the exercise bike. I did 2x2mi runs that week. MAN was it tough after literally 5 weeks of sitting or lying almost all the time. At the time my motivation was to take a chance and try to do Ironman Cozumel which I had signed up for over a year in advance. It never occurred to me it would help me heal. Make me whole.

I can't quantify how much it helped. My neurosurgeon gave me a drug called Namenda for Alzheimer's patients which may or may not have helped. My work was very warm in allowing me to come back to work part time the week after my accident (They still asked for a doctors note ALLOWING me to work :) ), and gradually ramp back to full time over the next 2-3 months, and I believe that getting back on the horse is the best way to get better after ANYTHING. I feel that my daily cardio 5 weeks out for 5 months was a BIG contributor to my rapid recovery.

I think this article in Men's Health sums up a lot of these things (for women as well), in an article I read recently. They cite a few interesting studies that quantify some of the benefits I've experienced and claimed. The top line 15% effectiveness improvement is a big deal. Imagine if EVERYONE started exercising regularly. Our health care costs would go down, and we would experience a MASSIVE productivity bump. Is a world where everyone is Healthy, Productive, and even Happy so well within our grasp?

A couple of really profound quotes from the article for the scientists out there:

The results of the electroencephalograph may explain the difference in brain activity. The data showed that the single 30-minute bout of cardio had two major effects on an electrical system of the brain called P3. First, the exercise session "decreased P3 latency," which means subjects were able to process information faster. Second, Hillman found that the cardio session "increased P3 amplitude," a measurement of brain activity related to memory and focus. So their aerobic exercise helped them concentrate better and recall information faster.

That's pretty low down. But they are saying your brain is faster, and stronger. What? Another study (admittedly subjective) said that:

Workers scored 15 percent higher in their ability to meet both time and output demands on the day they exercised. "What we found staggered us, and we were left wondering what companies might do otherwise to produce these 15 percent improvements," says Jim McKenna, Ph.D., the lead researcher.

and two quotes that back up my early comments on health, productivity, and even happiness as a byproduct of exercise:

Edward Hallowell, M.D., a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and coauthor of Delivered from Distraction, concurs with Giorgio's observations. "Cardio is one of the best treatments for ADD and poor mental focus, as well as for anxiety," he says. "It's like a wonder drug for the brain."

And shall we add "happiness" to the list, too? Duke University researchers found that performing moderate-intensity cardio three times a week was as effective as the antidepressant Zoloft at reducing major depression.

Pretty potent stuff. I welcome your comments.

A couple of other interesting articles I've written on triathlon:

A scientific coverage of the understanding of modern training methods, periodization, intervals, as well as some of my favorite training methodologies and coaching/writing resources out there.

The Art of Triathlon. My thoughts on how testing oneself leads to a better being.
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6/18/2010
Pretty Awesome NIH study about metabolites in our bodies after exercise. The evidence keeps on mounting!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20505214
Also some NY Times Blog Coverage of the results.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/phys-ed-a-workout-for-your-bloodstream/

They put it well:
" the experiment does reinforce the lesson, which we all know whether we heed it or not, that the human body needs to move."

Yeah! They also link to some articles with good quotes:
Exercise improves your grades.
"After controlling for such variables, the findings still showed that exercise made a sizable difference in a student’s G.P.A. On a 4.0 grade scale, students who exercised vigorously seven days a week had G.P.A.’s that were, on average, 0.4 points higher than those who didn’t exercise. "
Exercise keeps our cells young (As measured by size of telomeres).
And interesting mixed reports about exercise improving sleep quality. I think so but they put some doubts on it. Basically in this one it seems to be a subjective (i.e. placebo type effect on people's OPINIONS, not real effects).

The Compton Cookout, and Isadore Hall III: McCarthy's New Age Revival

2010-02-20T09:10:00.000-08:00

Wow. Last night I first heard about this from my friend Dayna. Today Seph posted this news article on twitter. The headline reads "Lawmakers Outraged Over 'Compton Cookout' Party." And I'm thinking, this guy is an elected official and he has nothing better to do? You can see a whole video of the press conference he had here.

I personally found it pretty annoying that he said "racist and sexist" about 20 times. Clearly this guy didn't have much to say. From what I read, there was not a SINGLE incident of racial or sexist injustice perpetrated as a result of this party to which our state assembly is now "demanding full accountability for their actions." Continuing from Hall's website:

“Today, I call upon UC San Diego Chancellor Mary Anne Fox, UC President Mark Yudof and the UC Board of Regents to launch an immediate and thorough investigation of the ‘Compton Cookout’ event to determine the names of those responsible for planning and participating in this act of racism and sexism, what university affiliated organizations participated in the event and what if any public funds or resources were used to plan or carry out the event. At the conclusion of the investigation, university officials should act swiftly to sanction all responsible parties including the revocation of fraternity or sorority charters, the full repayment of any public funds used to support these organizations and the individual suspension or expulsion of any student found responsible for planning or participating in this act of hate.”

Which begs the question. Is Isadore Hall Anti-Racist? Has he criticized Dave Chappelle (Clayton Bigsby Skit), or Chris Rock (Black People -vs- Niggaz)? I don't think he should have. Actually I think that Dave Chapelle and Chris Rock were much more effective at dispelling racism through comedy than the showboat Isadore Hall ever will. What does this say about California? We don't tolerate same sex marriage, and we tolerate McCarthyist Assemblyman (and women)?

In his overridden veto of the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, President Truman wrote, "In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have."

criticizing the Eisenhower administration, he later said :"It is now evident that the present Administration has fully embraced, for political advantage, McCarthyism. I am not referring to the Senator from Wisconsin. He is only important in that his name has taken on the dictionary meaning of the word. It is the corruption of truth, the abandonment of the due process law. It is the use of the big lie and the unfounded accusation against any citizen in the name of Americanism or security. It is the rise to power of the demagogue who lives on untruth; it is the spreading of fear and the destruction of faith in every level of society."

Sounds right to me. This guy said nothing about a crime, or a trial, or due process, and still is demanding "suspension or expulsion" of students involved. I'm not intentionally racist, or sexist, yet I am still enlightened enough to know that EVERYONE has biases, opinions, and weaknesses. This kind of self gratifying, grandstanding behavior by politicians is the problem today, not the solution.

On June 1, 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine Republican, delivered a speech to the Senate she called a "Declaration of Conscience". In a clear attack upon McCarthyism, she called for an end to "character assassinations" and named "some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize; The right to hold unpopular beliefs; The right to protest; The right of independent thought." She said "freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America," and decried "cancerous tentacles of 'know nothing, suspect everything' attitudes."^[68] Six other Republican Senators—Wayne Morse, Irving M. Ives, Charles W. Tobey, Edward John Thye,George Aiken, and Robert C. Hendrickson—joined Smith in condemning the tactics of McCarthyism.

And now so am I. I 'm glad you have the right to speak your mind Isadore Hall. But racism is not a platform for your politics. California has enough problems, and considering that not a single of your constituents was maligned by this activity, it doesn't appear you're doing anything but filling the world with hot air.

I know this will be a contentious post. I welcome all comments, and invite discussion.

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1 Addition. I tried to submit this for comment to Isadore's Site. He won't accept comments from outside his district, yet he sees fit to comment on issues outside his district. I now consider him a hypocrite.

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3/7/10 Update.
Since I wrote this, things seem to have escalated a bit. Somebody hung a noose on campus, and a kkk hood was also placed in an obvious public place. The NY Times has good coverage of the racial tension at the school. Even system wide they say that

although gains have been made in the numbers of minority students since then, the proportion of white (30.5 percent) and Asian (39.8 percent) students enrolled last year far exceeded that of blacks (3.8 percent) and Latinos (20.4 percent).

Which to me actually seems pretty diverse. It may not be proportional to the population as a whole, but there's a LOT about UCSD, and the UC system for that matter that isn't representative of California. The numbers will equalize with time, of course, but to me it points more to providing resources at a younger age that make people ready for a place like the UC System.

Letting people in who will just fail out is a lame way to try to change this (i.e. affirmative action). I bet a more equal number of minorities would come to UCSD if they could get in because they learned a lot in high school and before. To me this means that we need to work to provide a better quality education to people who are raised in less privileged areas. It's a TOUGH environment, and somebody who wasn't exposed to academic challenges for years beforehand.

Top 25 Programming Errors

2010-02-17T21:09:00.000-08:00

The new list of top 25 programming errors was released. Mostly online application issues now. Cross Site Scripting, and OS Command injection are the ones I always think of at the network/web level. Then there's all the buffer overflow/range checking which is common in all forms of code. There are many other ones I have less of an opinion on. There are two I think are worth note:

22 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

That's lame. But does open up the risk of (D)Dos attacks very easyily. I think DDOS on the network level can typically be handled by network operators.

25 Race Condition

That's a big one. Right now there is not a single programmer out there who can right multi threaded code without ANY risk of race condition. The only answer is to alter the architecture of the way programming languages are structured, and interface with processors.

Making Urban Farming Scalable with Fish

2010-02-17T18:40:00.000-08:00

A friend who writes about sustainable and novel development linked to an interesting article in one of her blog posts. The blog she linked to talks about making urban farms with fish and vegetables interacting. I LOVE the concept and have wanted to do something similar, but a little more micro, and feature rich for a long time.

My buddy Justin at the Borevitz Lab, showed me a video a while ago that was based on mission to mars work. I don't remember the details but I remember also including solar panels to generate power for the system, as well as your home/office. I also figured you could absorb some water waste (say shower and liquid toilet waste) and using that in the whole system (I know I read this somewhere as well. Anyone got a link?) also capture the water as it evaporates from the plants to provide purified drinking water. Any overflow could be re-routed, and used for yard purposes, as it already is in many cities.

So not just vegetables, and fish, but power and clean water! I'd love to see this produced from modularized units allowing different scales to be built easily by stacking different units together. I also always thought this would be great for primo restaraunts to ALWAYS have fresh veggies and fish available. Some people may freak out having there poop and potatoes so literally close, despite the real circle of life reality, but that's not me.

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Justin updated me with some links:

He does research with simulating day/light cycles, different conditions, and wavelengths of light:

http://borevitzlab.uchicago.edu/resources/growth-chambers

Also he reposted the mission to mars video from NASA:

http://borevitzlab.uchicago.edu/resources/growth-chambers/PlantLifeSupportSystem.wmv

Aerobic Training Theory, History, and Methodologies. My take...

2010-02-14T19:35:00.000-08:00

I came across and excellent paper today with a LOT of information on aerobic and interval training. It's a hot topic these days, as a LOT of people are advocating training methodologies which are non-traditional. The paper at sportsci.org mentions that among ELITE athletes they do mostly Z1/Z2 training, a bit of Z4 training, and very little Z3 training. The reality is that everyone knows you have to put in the time, but being smart matters to everyone. Elites trying to maximize the gains from the enormous training they do, or time limited athletes trying to improve their ROI on the little time they have.

The problem with studies, is that they are always very controlled environments. I believe it's very important to investigate anything that comes your way, but never to take anything as an absolute. In the paper they highlight the key question most people think of when thinking about intensity:

If doing some HIT (1-2 bouts per week) gives a performance boost, is more even better?

It's well accepted that you CANNOT do too much high intensity, because you get burned out and/or overtrained. They also make an interesting point, which runs counter to my assumption that elites are a bad example:

Observing the training methods of the world's best endurance athletes represent a more valid picture of “best practice” than we can develop from short-term laboratory studies of untrained or moderately trained subjects. In today’s performance environment, where promising athletes have essentially unlimited time to train, all athletes train a lot and are highly motivated to optimize the training process.

So what are we to do? I think it's important to learn from different sources. The a few of my favorites are below, and they all have a LOT of good material to read, and learn from.

One of my favorite resources is Gordo Byrn, who's articles can be found at Endurance Corner. He focuses on ironman training, which is obviously a small, but elite slice of the sport. He embodies the attitude that there are no short cuts, and empasizes the most underrated key of training period. Consistency! His notions are clearly more for aggressive ironman folks. Certainly NOT for non competitive age groupers, and shorter course athletes. Coming back from a major injury last year, in a very slow, deliberate way, really opened my eyes to consistency and the power of small details.

On the flip side you can find people like the Endurance Nation guys, Rich Strauss and Pat McCrann. They are MUCH more focused on training for people who want a holistic and balanced life, which means simplicity, fewer workouts a day, and novel notions like using Zone 3 in training to maximize ROI.

Also on this end of the spectrum, is ironguides. They call their package "The Method" and also look at balance very deeply. They also advocate not becoming beholden to technology (i.e. over reliant on your HR Monitor, or Power Meter etc.), and being in tune with your body. Very interesting notions of hormonal balance, and its control over training response are also frequently mentioned.

So far based on my experience, here's how I see it:
1) Consistency is king. Nothing is more valuable then putting in the time. When I travel, I at LEAST run for 30-40 minutes a day. It's usually easy to at least find an exercise bike at most hotels, and pools are fairly common out there as well. Still other activities can fill the gap when real world considerations are taken into concern. If I spend 3 hours walking, a couple hours kayaking, go hiking, or am active in some other way, it's not as important.
2) It's OK to go easy. Too much work, stayed up to late, over did a workout, whatever. If needed go easy. If you are not prepared, doing a hard workout is counterproductive, and can have bad consequences like lethargy or illness.
3) Beware unnecessary distance. QUALITY trumps distance. There are physical adaptations that occur from regular long work. No Doubt. It's also important to have a realistic understanding of how fast you can do the different legs of a triathlon. Earlier in my triathlon journey I did WAY to many long runs, and bikes. I was mentally assuaged because I had done 3-4 hour bikes before I did my first 4 hour triathlon.
4) It's important to go hard some times. For me that's typically best done in a controlled environment (bike trainer/treadmill) because I like to measure my improvement. I've also been getting regular Vo2/LT tests the last two years. In any case it's important to go fast/hard. I like hills a lot on the bike, because it's also good force work at lower RPMs. Tempo runs can be pretty fun even outside, but for real Z4 intervals, a treadmill is VERY helpful. Even in off season, or recovery weeks throw in some little accelerations to keep yourself in the game.
5) Be aware of your body. Bike position. Running form. ESPECIALLY swimming form. Even easy recovery work allows you to continually try to improve your form and economy. All incredibly important. Consistent sleep. Good nutrition.